The Fourth of July is one of handful of holiday parade opportunities for your septic pumping or portable restroom company. There’s nothing like a parade to bring people together in a joyous moment of community spirit. And even better is participating in them, says the Tillett family of Palmyra, Pennsylvania. 

Betty Tillett owns Tillett Inc., a plumbing and drain cleaning company, along with her son Jeff Tillett Jr., while her husband Jeff Tillett Sr. and daughter Jennifer Craig operate the portable restroom division, Tillett Toilets.

Tillett Toilets generally tries to do four or five end-of-year holiday parades in nearby communities. They’re in small towns, but Jeff Tillett Sr. says they’re actually large parades. “There’s many companies involved. It’s kind of big out here.”

Several pieces of equipment are used. In 2017 they made a small float out of one of their wheelchair-accessible PolyJohn units by putting a Polaris 600 all-terrain vehicle inside it. The exterior of the unit was labeled with company information. They also use their delivery trucks, a 2017 Isuzu built out by FlowMark Vacuum Trucks with a 500-gallon waste and 300-gallon freshwater aluminum tank with a stake body and a 12-place trailer from K&K Mfg.

“We had them all decorated,” Craig says. “And all the grandkids — my parents have 10 grandkids — rode in the back of the truck and helped throw candy. My brother drove his plumbing truck with a pull-behind float that had toilets with our slogan on them — ‘Got toilets? Rent, Repair and Replace.’ We had three different toilets: a standard unit for rent, an overflowing unit for repair and then a brand-new one for replace.”

The company takes everyone out to dinner afterward. One parade in 2017 was especially memorable, Tillett says. “It was a couple days before Christmas and it actually started snowing. It was really cool. We really enjoyed that one.”

Parades, of course, are a good way to showcase a company and support the community, but mainly it’s just fun, Tillett says. “All the employees and their families get involved in it. That’s what’s really nice.”